SOPA, PIPA, and the Blackout

[Portia]

What exactly is SOPA, and why should I care, especially in a world where a fourth-amendment-violation NDAA was signed on New Year's?

Admin note: this was split from the random thread, after Dead Cat started a thread about the topic; her post wasn't in response to the first two, although that's how they show up now.

[Laser Jock]

What exactly is SOPA, and why should I care, especially in a world where a fourth-amendment-violation NDAA was signed on New Year's?

Good question. It is to the First Amendment what the NDAA is to the Fourth, more or less. It (and PIPA, the Senate version of the bill) is an effort by the movie and music industry to grab power—to be able to shut down any site that they say infringes on copyright. Sites could be blocked for a single link to another site if that other site has infringing content, or if it talks about infringing content, or if it mentions ways to get around the blocks. As a result, everything from email to Facebook to blogs to search engines would have to be actively censored or risk being shut down. (This would surely include the Board and this forum, for instance.)

This isn't what these bills ostensibly do, but they're very, very broad and would be very easy to abuse—and the movie and music industries have already proven that they will do so (with less-draconian measures like the DMCA).

For a synopsis in 4 minutes, see this video; for an infographic, see here; and for an editorial in the New York Times, see here. I also enjoyed craigslist's page on SOPA.

So in short...if you don't want a rather drastic encroachment on your First Amendment rights, it's not too late! (Click here if you want an easy way to contact your Congresspeople about SOPA and PIPA.) Don't give up just because of the NDAA.

(Oh, and there are other reasons not to like SOPA/PIPA too, like the fact that they would seriously decrease the security of the Internet, and possibly make it less stable. But that's less important, to me, than the free speech issues and the drastic effect this would have on all kinds of companies, including stifling start-ups.)

[Dead Cat]

I don't usually get involved in the political discussions, but I'm curious about what anyone has to say about this.

[Laser Jock]

I'll go ahead and move the couple of posts we've had about it from the random thread; I was thinking they merited their own thread anyway, so thanks for giving me the opportunity. My response to Portia is a good starting point for what I think about it.

[krebscout]

Is anybody actually for it aside from the guys who wrote the bill in the first place?

[Laser Jock]

Unfortunately, yes. Until recent widespread protests, it looked entirely likely that SOPA and/or PIPA would be passed without much difficulty. It sounds like many in Congress don't understand enough about technology to realize how incredibly overreaching the bills are; they were presented with the bills and told they were to stop piracy and save American jobs, and who isn't in favor of that?

I can only hope that the very large amount of attention SOPA and PIPA have gotten lately will prompt our lawmakers to actually look into the bills a little more before voting for them. You'd think they'd do that anyway, but...

[Marduk]

LJ, I think it had less to do with ignorance and more to do with corporate interests. After all, the folks who profited most from this were the folks passing lots of money to congress and into superPACs.

All around a terrible bill, fortunately there's enough folks with money (like google) against it to stop the folks with money who were for it.

[Dragon Lady]

Yellow is often frustrated with technology laws. Because they're usually passed by people who have no idea how to turn on a computer. We just need more youngsters in politics.

Don't believe me? Take a look at patent laws. They're ridiculous.

[Marduk]

To be fair, half the problem with patent laws is that they were written before turning on a computer even existed.

[Dragon Lady]

True. But technology laws should keep up with technology. Which means they have to be updated a lot, but since technology keeps changing, we can't expect new technology to live with outdated laws. Which means we also need politicians who still have the mental capacity to keep up with the changing technology.

[Yarjka]

Yellow is often frustrated with technology laws. Because they're usually passed by people who have no idea how to turn on a computer. We just need more youngsters in politics.

This video. Brilliant.

[Laser Jock]

That video is awesome. And I'm starting to have more and more respect for Rep. Chaffetz.

[Fredjikrang]

It's cool that he said that long before all the media hoopla as well. I like it when people are willing to admit that they don't know enough to make a decision. Especially when they are willing to try and find out.